High thermoelectric figure of merit in silicon-germanium superlattice structured nanowires
Abstract
By using a combination of the first-principles density functional theory and nonequilibrium Green's function for electron and phonon transport, we investigate the thermoelectric properties of silicon-germanium superlattice nanowires (NWs). Our results show that introducing superlattice structures always increases thermoelectric figure of merit, ZT, which depends on the periodic length of the superlattice NWs. For n-type superlattice NWs, the achievable maximum ZT is 4.7, which is 5-fold increase as compared to the equivalent pristine silicon NWs. For p-type wires, the achieved maximum ZT is 2.74, which is 4.6-fold increase as compared to the pristine silicon NWs.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Pub Defense Publication
- Publication Date
- Dec 03, 2012
- Source ID
- 10.1063/1.4769443
Entities
People
- Baowen Li
- Gang Zhang
- Jinwu Jiang
- Lihong Shi
Organizations
- Air Force Office of Scientific Research
- Jiangnan University
- National Natural Science Foundation of China
- Peking University
- Tongji University